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Asked and answered. Materialism contains no such notion, and you can't make potentiality work because you have to beg the question of a soul in order to keep potentiality from rendering inanimate objects equally as improbable as a soulless person. It's not as if you have made a secret of your preconceived proof. You worked it out via statistical formulation that all you'd need is a Big Denominator to render soulless people improbable with. You told us you were doing this. Now you're simply trying to invent something -- anything -- that gives you that Big Denominator and just beg it into existence so that it can serve what you predetermined the proof would have to be.

Even if he can foist the Yuge Denominator on us, there's nothing to stop us then using his formula to disprove the hypothesis that Jabba has an immortal soul. After all, he can hardly deny that that hypothesis includes "selves".

__________________"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield

"The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky

- That would produce a real, and different, person/self that otherwise, never had a chance. In other words, those two combinations of sperm cell and ovum do represent two real persons/selves that currently don't have a chance of ever existing. No one will ever know those 'potential' selves.

No, it doesn't "represent" anything of the sort. All your argument has ever been is a long string of different language that begs your central question. You whine because you think you can't effectively communicate your claim. No, you're just running out of ways to disguise your blatant illogic.

Your description of "the self" is functionally indistinguishable from a soul in all contexts and you're trying so very hard to paste it onto materialism where it doesn't belong. The sense of self under materialism isn't individualized. It isn't pre-existsent. It isn't static. It isn't dictated once and for all by genetic initial conditions. Self-awareness under materialism is none of the soully nonsense you're trying to make materialism explain. There's no concept of "potential selves," which is just a thin veneer over the begged question of a preincarnate soul.

Just no. You've spun this elaborate straw man for what you're going to "disprove," and thereby pretend to have proven some other individual claim. It's not as if this is nuanced or complicated logic. Your claims fail for very simple logical reasons that everyone sees, whereupon you rudely ignore them all and then try to blame your failure on their supposed closed-mindedness. Just sad, Jabba.

but, I think that most well-educated neutral minds would see what I mean.

You are absolutely correct. Well-educated neutral minds have seen exactly what you mean and have soundly refuted every point. Less well-educated and less neutral minds have failed to address the refutations.

Or conversely you can prove anything. Throwing the rules out the window simply removes the teeth from the concept of proof. Jabba wants a sympathetic audience. That's not what proofs are for. Sympathizers don't need proof; they already agree with the conclusion. The purpose of a proof is to demonstrate to people who don't already believe your conclusion that the conclusion holds as a matter of fact despite their disbelief. It lays out the reasoning why something has to be true based on what we know and can observe, not just reasons why someone should believe in it.

Jabba has started from the presumption that his believe is correct and that his proof is true. He has told us assuredly that he is as emotionally invested both in his belief and in his ability to prove it. To reconcile his failure to do so with his desire to do so, he at once changes the laws of physics to make his argument work, begs his critics to express agreement, and blames his critics for not being open-minded enough to accept it. If the conclusion can't change, then change the rules so that the conclusion doesn't have to. It's not enough for him simply to believe in the conclusion; he has to believe there's a valid line of reasoning that leads to it.

- I'm going to try to add this kind of 'potential' self up to infinity. I claim that there is an infinity of this kind of 'potential' selves.

Your claim is incorrect. The number of possible permutations of the human genome is calculable. It is a very large number, it is not infinite.

__________________The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.Bertrand Russell
Zooterkin is correct Darat
Nerd! Hokulele
Join the JREF Folders ! Team 13232Ezekiel 23:20

- How about those that 'could' have existed in the past?
- I'm claiming that by theoretically removing all the barriers that prevent the combination of particular sperm cells with particular ova (e.g.the space/time barriers, etc.), every possible combination represents a different person/self.

How does that influence the likelihood of your existence?

Hans

__________________If you love life, you must accept the traces it leaves.

Dave,
- I might have run out of ideas as to how to effectively describe this claim to you and your colleagues -- but, I think that most well-educated neutral minds would see what I mean. Removing all the barriers preventing the combination of particular human sperm cells and ova, represents some of the number of 'potential' human selves.
- Hopefully, I'll be opening my new website soon, and attract some neutral minds and that they will see what I mean...

Insults, insults.

Hans

__________________If you love life, you must accept the traces it leaves.

Your claim is incorrect. The number of possible permutations of the human genome is calculable. It is a very large number, it is not infinite.

If it was infinite, every cell (or at least, every cell that contained a copy of his DNA) in Jabba's body would be of infinite size. I suspect that he would find this inconvenient. Just imagine the tailors' bills!

__________________"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield

"The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky

I'm claiming that by theoretically removing all the barriers that prevent the combination of particular sperm cells with particular ova (e.g.the space/time barriers, etc.), every possible combination represents a different person/self.

If you remove the space/time barriers that prevent all sorts of impossible things happening, then you can make all sorts of wild claims about all sorts of wacky things.

Unfortunately this is the real world and you can't just ignore awkward facts.

Not that any of this matters. You may as well be debating how many angels can fit on the head of a pin for all help it's contributing to your proof of immortality argument. It's all entirely irrelevant to the big picture.

Moreover, you seem hellbent on debating these tangential minutiae while ignoring the problems with the meat of your argument. What has any of this got to to with anything? It's almost like you're deliberately trying to bore your opponents to death by arguing these pointless issues. None of this is helping your case at all.

What do you expect? He's retired, no kids at home and I guess nothing else to do but to drag all this on until he dies. It's his hobby. It's a shame there's all the ego tied up in all of this; he's not trying to prove immortality per se, but how he's the only one brilliant enough to have figured it out. He's way smarter than the rest of humanity and we're all big meanies because we don't recognize his brilliance.

- How about those that 'could' have existed in the past?
- I'm claiming that by theoretically removing all the barriers that prevent the combination of particular sperm cells with particular ova (e.g.the space/time barriers, etc.), every possible combination represents a different person/self.

You don't need to enumerate all the possibilities in that. Just look at the number of base pairs in the human genome and calculate the number of variations; that will include all those of you and Cleopatra and so on.

There are about 3 billion base pairs in the human genome. If you simply work out the number of possible variations of the 4 possible values for each base pair, ignoring the fact that the majority would not produce a viable life-form, let alone a human, but which will include all the possible theoretical results of the coupling you seem obsessed with, you get a very (very) large number. It. Is. Not. Infiniite.

__________________The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.Bertrand Russell
Zooterkin is correct Darat
Nerd! Hokulele
Join the JREF Folders ! Team 13232Ezekiel 23:20

You don't need to enumerate all the possibilities in that. Just look at the number of base pairs in the human genome and calculate the number of variations; that will include all those of you and Cleopatra and so on.

There are about 3 billion base pairs in the human genome. If you simply work out the number of possible variations of the 4 possible values for each base pair, ignoring the fact that the majority would not produce a viable life-form, let alone a human, but which will include all the possible theoretical results of the coupling you seem obsessed with, you get a very (very) large number. It. Is. Not. Infiniite.

Well, trivially, that is 43,000,000,000 (not infinity). But worse again, a rather large subset of that number will be non-viable. I don't know how large that subset is, not being a geneticist, but no matter how you slice it, it is not infinity, even if one includes the non-viable possibilities.

No amount of equivocation over, say my sperm and Cleopatra's ovum will magically turn the number into infinity by dint of wishful thinking. 43,000,000,000 is a finite number which includes all possibilities of everyone who ever has existed or will exist or never existed at all. There simply are no other combinations outside of that limiting number.

ETA: The figure of 43,000,000,000 assumes that all possible combinations are potentially available, but they are not. There have only been 120,000,000,000 humans over the course of human history, thus further limiting the possible results when added to the non-viable possibilities. It is almost certain that Jabba will ignore this.

I already asked Jabba about the parent problem. Jabba has two parents, who in turn had two parents(his grand parents x4) each, who in turn had two parents (his great-grandparents x8) parents and so on. Taking a 30 year generation, by the time one works back to the time of the Romans, Jabba alone has 147,573,952,589,676,412,928 ancestors. And that applies to everyone on the planet, all 7,000,000,000 of us. Thus the total number of ancestors required is 147,573,952,589,676,412,928 x 7,000,000,000 or 1,033,017,668,127,734,890,496,000,000,000. Given that only 120 bn humans have ever existed through all time, how is this possible? Needless to say, Jabba promised faithfully that he would be back to me and never did.

__________________Who is General Failure? And why is he reading my hard drive?

Dave,
- I might have run out of ideas as to how to effectively describe this claim to you and your colleagues -- but, I think that most well-educated neutral minds would see what I mean. Removing all the barriers preventing the combination of particular human sperm cells and ova, represents some of the number of 'potential' human selves.
- Hopefully, I'll be opening my new website soon, and attract some neutral minds and that they will see what I mean...

I can hardly wait. You'll open your website and expose every freaking lie that has come out of your sewer-hole.

- How about those that 'could' have existed in the past?
- I'm claiming that by theoretically removing all the barriers that prevent the combination of particular sperm cells with particular ova (e.g.the space/time barriers, etc.), every possible combination represents a different person/self.

You could just as well theoretically miracle all the objections to your magic show out of existence, and and claim victory.

ETA: The figure of 43,000,000,000 assumes that all possible combinations are potentially available, but they are not.

Well, I explicitly said they were not all viable, so I wasn't assuming that. I'm just setting a very generous upper bound (which is still not infinity) for Jabba's spurious denominator.

__________________The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.Bertrand Russell
Zooterkin is correct Darat
Nerd! Hokulele
Join the JREF Folders ! Team 13232Ezekiel 23:20

Dave,
- I might have run out of ideas as to how to effectively describe this claim to you and your colleagues -- but, I think that most well-educated neutral minds would see what I mean. Removing all the barriers preventing the combination of particular human sperm cells and ova, represents some of the number of 'potential' human selves.
- Hopefully, I'll be opening my new website soon, and attract some neutral minds and that they will see what I mean...

You are so full of yourself. Everyone sees what you mean, and is telling why you are wrong. But you cannot even begin to imagine any possibility that you are wrong. The person showing all the bias here is you, Jabba.

- I might have run out of ideas as to how to effectively describe this claim to you and your colleagues --

Good. Then perhaps you can stop doing it, and start addressing the many reasoned objections to your "proof". Everyone knows what the claim is, and using different terms to describe it won't magically make it correct or overcome the objections to the argument as a whole.

__________________"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield

"The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky

You don't need to enumerate all the possibilities in that. Just look at the number of base pairs in the human genome and calculate the number of variations; that will include all those of you and Cleopatra and so on.

There are about 3 billion base pairs in the human genome. If you simply work out the number of possible variations of the 4 possible values for each base pair, ignoring the fact that the majority would not produce a viable life-form, let alone a human, but which will include all the possible theoretical results of the coupling you seem obsessed with, you get a very (very) large number. It. Is. Not. Infiniite.

Zoo,
- Thanks for the figure, but I think that most of us have agreed that even if we could create a perfect copy of a physical person, we wouldn't reproduce the same self. We wouldn't bring a dead self back to life, nor give a second pair of eyes to an existing self.
- Also, if we could count all those 'potential' selves, we should also be able to count all the 'potential2' selves from the 'potential' selves combinations, etc.

__________________"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence." Charles Bukowski
"Most good ideas don't work." Jabba
"Se due argomenti sembrano altrettanto convincenti, il meno sarcastico è probabilmente corretto." Jabba's Razor

Zoo,
- Thanks for the figure, but I think that most of us have agreed that even if we could create a perfect copy of a physical person, we wouldn't reproduce the same self. We wouldn't bring a dead self back to life, nor give a second pair of eyes to an existing self.
- Also, if we could count all those 'potential' selves, we should also be able to count all the 'potential2' selves from the 'potential' selves combinations, etc.

Zoo,
- Thanks for the figure, but I think that most of us have agreed that even if we could create a perfect copy of a physical person, we wouldn't reproduce the same self. We wouldn't bring a dead self back to life, nor give a second pair of eyes to an existing self.
- Also, if we could count all those 'potential' selves, we should also be able to count all the 'potential2' selves from the 'potential' selves combinations, etc.

Jab,
- how do you count things that don't exist?
- do we really need to revisit the thousands of posts demonstrating that you don't understand the concept of identical?

Zoo,
- Thanks for the figure, but I think that most of us have agreed that even if we could create a perfect copy of a physical person, we wouldn't reproduce the same self. We wouldn't bring a dead self back to life, nor give a second pair of eyes to an existing self.

Who's talking about bringing anyone back to life?

Quote:

- Also, if we could count all those 'potential' selves,

We can, that's the point (or at least put an upper limit on it). It's not infinite.

Quote:

we should also be able to count all the 'potential2' selves from the 'potential' selves combinations, etc.

What on earth are you talking about now? What is a 'potential2 self', and what does it have to do with the price of fish?

__________________The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.Bertrand Russell
Zooterkin is correct Darat
Nerd! Hokulele
Join the JREF Folders ! Team 13232Ezekiel 23:20

I think that most of us have agreed that even if we could create a perfect copy of a physical person, we wouldn't reproduce the same self.

No one has agreed to this in the way you want it to mean. Stop equivocating. In materialism, there is no such thing as "same self" or "different self." That's you trying to paste on the idea of the self being a soul under a different name and make materialism explain it. There is no "same self" in materialism just like there is no "same going 60 mph" in automotive mechanics.

Quote:

We wouldn't bring a dead self back to life, nor give a second pair of eyes to an existing self.

These are your foisted concepts, not any part of materialism. You're trying to make self-awareness under materialism functionally identical to a soul. It just isn't. There's no melodramatic "bringing back to life" or any of "second pair of eyes." Properties belong to entities, not entities to properties. There is no "existing self" to give anything to, or any of the other conditions that would hold for a soul. Self-awareness under materialism is an emergent property. You can't demonstrate that you know what an emergent property is, and you don't display any interest in finding out. When we say "emergent property" you seem to think we all just used a different word for "soul." A property doesn't, and can't, exist separately from the entity of which it is a property. That's what it means to be a property. While we can create additional entities that also display the property, there's no individualization to the property itself.

We've identified two fatal flaws to your argument that cover your foisting and straw-man stuff. Since you keep doggedly repeating the same error, it remains fatal to your proof for as long as you do it.

Quote:

Also, if we could count all those 'potential' selves, we should also be able to count all the 'potential2' selves from the 'potential' selves combinations, etc.

No, that's not how combinatorics works. Let's chalk that up under the already identified fatal flaw of your general ignorance of mathematics.

Zoo,
- Thanks for the figure, but I think that most of us have agreed that even if we could create a perfect copy of a physical person, we wouldn't reproduce the same self. We wouldn't bring a dead self back to life, nor give a second pair of eyes to an existing self.
- Also, if we could count all those 'potential' selves, we should also be able to count all the 'potential2' selves from the 'potential' selves combinations, etc.

Everyone has agreed that the self is a process of a functioning brain. You agreed it is a process and not a separate thing. You are dissembling when you say otherwise.

Zoo,
- Thanks for the figure, but I think that most of us have agreed that even if we could create a perfect copy of a physical person, we wouldn't reproduce the same self. We wouldn't bring a dead self back to life, nor give a second pair of eyes to an existing self.

So what? What does that have to do with anything?

What is this bizarre obsession you have with the eyes and the selves that look through them? What does any of this have to do with anything? I have no idea what or who you think you're addressing by bringing this up

Quote:

- Also, if we could count all those 'potential' selves, we should also be able to count all the 'potential2' selves from the 'potential' selves combinations, etc.

All "those 'potential' selves"? All what potential selves?

Are you now counting non-existent copies of people as potential selves? You're just desperately adding ad hoc anything you can think of to your pool of potential selves.

But even if we grant you for the sake of argument to allow you to count them as potential selves, there's still only a finite amount of them because you can't make infinite copies of people. No matter how many times you add up finite numbers, the result is still going to be a finite number. You're never going to reach infinity by addition.

How is the number of potential human selves in any way relevant to the likelihood of a particular self existing?

Dave,
- I said this before, and you didn't agree -- but, I can't remember why.
- Just like a simple lottery. The more tickets in the ticket container, the smaller the likelihood that your ticket will be drawn -- given a fair drawing.

__________________"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence." Charles Bukowski
"Most good ideas don't work." Jabba
"Se due argomenti sembrano altrettanto convincenti, il meno sarcastico è probabilmente corretto." Jabba's Razor

But existence/non-existence is not just like a simple lottery, Jabba, as has been explained to you more times than I can count.

__________________"If you trust in yourself ... and believe in your dreams ... and follow your star ... you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things" - Terry Pratchett

Dave,
- I said this before, and you didn't agree -- but, I can't remember why.
- Just like a simple lottery. The more tickets in the ticket container, the smaller the likelihood that your ticket will be drawn -- given a fair drawing.

How is being born like a lottery?

__________________"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." - aggle-rithm

Dave,
- I said this before, and you didn't agree -- but, I can't remember why.
- Just like a simple lottery. The more tickets in the ticket container, the smaller the likelihood that your ticket will be drawn -- given a fair drawing.

Even in a infinitely large lottery, a ticket WILL be drawn.

You of course will pretend otherwise.
There are zillions of examples of things actualizing from infinite sets.
Like bananas. There are as close to infinity as human dna arrangements (which is not infinity) as there are banana arrangements. yet individual specific bananas exist all the time. The specific banana is the numerator, all possible bananas is the denominator. This trivial example destroys your argument.
The likelihood of any banana is zero according to your argument.
You can stick your fingers in your ears and go lalala, and make your own website where you can screen out the criticisms of your argument. You are fooling no one but yourself.

Dave,
- I said this before, and you didn't agree -- but, I can't remember why.
- Just like a simple lottery. The more tickets in the ticket container, the smaller the likelihood that your ticket will be drawn -- given a fair drawing.

A self isn't a ticket. It isn't a thing at all.

__________________"Oh god...What have you done, zooterkin? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!?!?!" - Cleon

Zoo,
- Thanks for the figure, but I think that most of us have agreed that even if we could create a perfect copy of a physical person, we wouldn't reproduce the same self.

No, what people have agreed to is that if we could somehow create a perfect copy of someone we would have perfectly reproduced all their properties, including their consciousnesses, but they would not be the same person because there would be two of them, not one. I can't imagine why you have such trouble with this concept. Do you really think that if you have a matching pair of candlesticks there is only one of them?

Quote:

We wouldn't bring a dead self back to life,

No, because a) a second identical "self" wouldn't be the same self as the first one (your old problem with distinguishing singular from plural again) and b) "selves" don't exist.

Quote:

nor give a second pair of eyes to an existing self.

No, because consciousness is produced by the brain, and each brain would be connected to its own set of eyes and not to the other's. And "selves" don't exist.

__________________"You got to use your brain." - McKinley Morganfield

"The poor mystic homeopaths feel like petted house-cats thrown at high flood on the breaking ice." - Leon Trotsky

Dave,
- I said this before, and you didn't agree -- but, I can't remember why.
- Just like a simple lottery. The more tickets in the ticket container, the smaller the likelihood that your ticket will be drawn -- given a fair drawing.

OK, lottery. I have asked you before, but I expect you will keep ignoring the question: Potential selves, whatever it is, are persons not born. They are non-players in the lottery. How can non-players affect your winning chances?

Hans

__________________If you love life, you must accept the traces it leaves.

I said this before, and you didn't agree -- but, I can't remember why.

You have an obligation to your critics to read and remember their posts. Or failing that, to go back and read them again when they become relevant and you wish to reference them. You seem to think not remembering a rebuttal makes it go away. Your proposal to publish a summary of this debate will suffer greatly from your inability to remember what the other side said.

Quote:

Just like a simple lottery. The more tickets in the ticket container, the smaller the likelihood that your ticket will be drawn -- given a fair drawing.

And if drawing a ticket in a lottery were like existing, that would mean something. But it isn't, so it doesn't. Why isn't it? One more time, it's because in a lottery there is a pool of tickets.waiting to be drawn. Conversely there isn't a pool of things waiting to exist. By definition, because that's what "exist" means. Entities don't exist until they do. That's why you had to invent a whole new ad hoc notion of pseudo-existence for your argument.

And as we learned from Volkswagens and bananas, alleged "potential" pseudo-existence prior to actually existing doesn't have anything to do with the probability of bananas and Volkswagens coming into being, or with whether they actually do. Despite the "infinite" number of "potential" things that supposedly pseudo-exist before they exist, things manage to exist. Therefore the probability that they will exist cannot be zero, which is what your model results in. And that's why you had to make up the additional proviso that Jabba® brand pseudo-existence -- now with Division-By-Infinity! -- applies only to souls. Because souls are just special in that particular way. Because you just somehow know that.

Yet somehow you're not begging the question and somehow your critics are all closed-minded.

Dave,
- I said this before, and you didn't agree -- but, I can't remember why.
- Just like a simple lottery. The more tickets in the ticket container, the smaller the likelihood that your ticket will be drawn -- given a fair drawing.

What's the likelihood that you will hit a particular atom in the side of a barn when you shoot at the side of the barn - given a fair shot?

Hey, it's kind of fun posting silliness that has nothing to do with whatever you're trying to prove. I assume that's why you do it, too?

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